Avranches, France

I awoke with a burning desire to escape Pontorson no matter what. The place was a dive in Winter. It specialised in being mostly closed during the day, but especially closed after 9pm at night, when not a soul could be seen on the street.

The only place that was open past the 9pm curfew was the trusty kebab shop. In my experience, kebabs in countries other than England have the incredible property of being edible when sober. The turny-meat-thing is the same, consisting of a mixture of mashed donkey lips and diced pig guts, but a great deal more care is taken with the preparation and presentation. If you eat in, your kebab is served not in a polystyrene box but on a china plate. With metal cutlery! It’s almost a Proper Meal.

The Fat Controller hadn’t magicked up any trains overnight, so I scanned the map to hatch my escape plan. There was a town further along the coast in the direction of Bayeux called Avranches that was thirty klicks away and so within my paltry pedalling range. It was also on the railway line should the rail workers decide to go back to their jobs any time this century. The sky was foreboding but the sleeting rain of yesterday had abated.

My first attempt to flee led me to a dual carriageway, so I had to retrace my route back to Hell and leave in another direction on a more minor road. Then the rain started. Nothing could make me turn back to Pontorson, however, and I pushed my sodden knees on towards Avranches. I had no right to moan about the weather, as I was the one who had decided to undertake a cycle tour in the middle of Winter. Instead I focused on how much better the hot shower, dry clothes and hearty meal would feel at the end of it. I kept my head down, focused on the horizon and tried to settle into a rhythm.

Unfortunately, nothing breaks your rhythm quite like a French dog launching itself onto its hind legs to bark like a rabid lunatic at you over a wall. It was heart attack material. Whenever I passed through a village I would leave its population of dogs in a frenzied state of barking. Whether it was my mode of transportation or my nationality they had been trained to harass, I’ll never know.

I had passed countless roadhouses and restaurants on my journey, but frustratingly (if predictably) none of them were open for business until a fortuitous wrong turn at a junction guarded by a vicious dog with a particularly bowel-loosening bark led me to a roadhouse that betrayed signs of life. I stepped inside to drip-dry off and warm up with a coffee, watching the rain falter and then slow to a drizzle. Retracing my steps and approaching the junction that had sent me off course at some speed, I caught the evil dog unawares and flew past barking at it before it could bark at me. Scalped!

I discovered Avranches was a fair bit bigger than Pontorson, which of course gave it far more opportunity for places to be closed. Apparently the town had been instrumental in General Patton’s decisive breaking of the German left flank in the Second World War. There was a monument dedicated to him in the form of, er, a tank parked on a roundabout. Quite why they chose to put it on a roundabout, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps the roundabout had also been somehow instrumental. He had also given his name to the budget hotel nearby that I checked into and immediately crashed at.

I foolishly slept past the 9pm Normandy Curfew, which meant it was kebab for dinner again.

Three nights in a row.

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